Reflections
by LSMunch
Summary: He's led a painful life. What exactly are his thoughts on it? Disregard any facts learned in HBP.


Disclaimer: Sadly, the Harry Potter characters and anything affiliated with them do not belong to me. They belong to JK Rowling and i somewhat despise her for it.

Some say that love is everywhere, that it comes in all shapes and sizes. Others say that it is specific, that everyone has only one true love. Yet others say that love doesn't exist, that it is a made up constant in our ever-changing lives, that it is a figment of our imaginations and that only fools believe it truly exists.

Some say that our lives are guided by God, that we have no control over them at all. Others say that our lives are guided by acts of fate and we have only minimal control of them, that we only decide what God to worship or where to live. Yet others say that we own our lives, that we alone control what happens to us and that everything wrong that happens around us must be our fault because we were effected by it.

Some say that there are supernatural forces out there, that they cause phenomenal things to happen on this Earth. Others say that there are life forms on other planets, that they land their spaceships on our planet. Yet others say we are the only living things in this universe, that we alone are the pioneers in life.

I'm the third party in all those things. I don't know how or why, but I am. I don't think that there is such a thing as love. I don't think that anyone controls our lives but ourselves. I don't think that there are other life forms out there.

Some say that I'm selfish, that I take what I want and leave others in the dust. Others say that I'm an old git who likes to terrorize people. Yet others say that I'm not that bad once you get to know me, that I only act the way I do because of what I've been through.

Some say that I need to go easier on people, that I shouldn't treat them so badly. Others say I need to be fair, that I should distribute things evenly. Yet others say that I'm doing fine the way I am, that if I ever changed, they wouldn't know what to think.

I've been told all of these things, or at least heard them whispered in the hallways or at the dinner table. I don't think I have to say what I believe in on those counts. I'm all of those things, though I personally doubt that I'm fine the way I am. I can't say why people think these things, though I'm pretty sure I have a good idea why.

There are times in my life when I wish I hadn't heard the things I've heard, or seen the things I've seen. They have etched scars within me that will never be healed, that will burn into my soul until the end of time. I've done some horrible things in my life, seen some horrible things in my life and felt some horrible things in my life. I've been through so many; I lost count when I was still a boy, an insignificant dot on the face of this Earth.

There are some out there that have tried to help me, others that have contributed to who I am today and how I got to be that way. Most of those who have tried to help me now rest in the ground, turned into angels who fear to tread on solid soil. Most of those who have contributed to my 'evilness' now rest far below the ground, where even gods fear to walk, past the gates of death and far into the burning fires of Hell.

I believe that those who have passed on do go on into either Heaven or Hell, or places like them. It's hard for me to say if what I believe in is true, having never been there. I don't know where I'd end up, Heaven or Hell. I've done so many things to contradict going to either, I'm afraid I'll be stuck in the middle with no place to go.

My whole life has been appalling, starting from the day I was born. If I were to repeat every little thing that has tended to that feeling, I would be here even after I died. But there are times when I wish I had written down those instances in my life where I needed someone to talk to, at least that way, I wouldn't have to live with those painful memories every day of my life.

It goes to my reason of thinking, that once you write down a memory, you have frozen it in time, that you will never think upon it again unless asked to. If that's the way it really works, than I fear I have discovered it too late, for I could have used that fact to my advantage long ago, when I needed it most. Though I suppose now wouldn't be a bad time to start. Maybe this way, I'll be able to sleep a little better tonight knowing I won't wake up screaming, covered in cold sweat from a nightmare of my past.

And I guess it goes to reason that I should start at the beginning, when I first learned my father was an alcoholic and what exactly that meant. When I learned to stay at a friend's house as much as possible to avoid him and his temper. When I learned that my mother had been treated this way from day two, considering day one she was in the hospital having me. When I learned that fear isn't from the bully on the playground, it's from the bully you live with, the one you have to go home to every night. When I learned fear is not knowing whether or not you'll live to see another day and knowing that if you tell someone, that you _won't_ live to see the sun shine for one more day, that you're going to be dead long before the rooster sings or the sun peeks over the horizon. That's how my childhood was, how I lived each day wondering if I'd see another.

I was born on a stormy day in March with the thunder shaking the windows and the lightening illuminating the whole room enough so one could see every line on grandmother's worried face as I came screaming into this world. She knew what I was in for, knew because my grandfather had treated her and my father the same way my father was going to treat us. It was a vicious cycle that she fought against every day and that my mother and I would fight until we were free from my father's hands.

I don't know much about my first few months, but I do know that they were probably the worst for my mother who, in the process of learning how to handle a baby, learned to stay away from my father whenever he was drunk, which was more often than not that first year of my life. When I learned to walk and talk, I also learned to always be nice to daddy, who would send me tumbling at the slightest wrongdoing on my part. It was a grim way to grow up.

I remember on one such night, my father came home late, drunk as usual. I was three or four at the time and playing with some toy I had gotten for my birthday. When I heard my father come home, I ran into the kitchen to greet him, wanting to please my father even though I probably would end up bruised later. Nonetheless, I went to greet him, running through the house in my socks. I slid into the kitchen on the slick tile floors and ran headlong into my father.

The look on his face as I collided with his leg was one of utmost shock and disbelief in the fact that I had just run into him. I quickly realized my mistake and stood up, for I had fallen to the floor upon impacting with his sturdy leg, my head bowed. I muttered an apology, my face burning red with embarrassment. I dimly heard my mother come into the room and I heard her breath hitch as she saw the situation I was in, but she dared not interfere because she knew it would only make it worse for the both of us.

I heard the rumble of his yell in his chest before it erupted from his mouth in a sharp bark. "Out of my way!" he had snarled. I muttered another apology and looked up into the angriest eyes I have ever seen. Before I knew it, I was on the floor again, though this time it was from a stinging blow to my face. I heard my mother scream and I fought wildly not to cry because if I did, it would only anger him more at the fact that I couldn't take pain. I felt his hand come down again and again... Soon, tears were streaming down my face and mingling with blood from my nose and brow.

I lay there for a long time afterwards, my head throbbing as well as my arm, and my face stinging with the force of my father's blows. I was dully aware of someone lifting me and carrying me into a room, mine supposedly, and washing my face of the dried blood and tears. I stayed in bed for a few days after the fact and when I was better, I swore to myself, as young as I was, that I was going to defeat my father one day. I was going to stop him from hurting my mother and I forever. I dedicated the rest of his life to working towards that goal.

There are two happy moments in my life when I felt that I had come out on top for once. One of these instances is the day I got my Hogwarts letter. Even at eleven, I knew that it was my way to escape home and the brutality that awaited me if and when I came back. I wished so badly that I could take my mother, take her away from the cruelty of my father's drunken rages. I packed my trunk solemnly that week before school started, dwelling on the pain I had endured all these years and the one chance I have to leave it, I can't bring my mother who had suffered alongside me.

I boarded the train and waved to my mother as the train pulled away. I watched her smiling, knowing that I would be safe for another year. That train ride was the first of seven, seven wonderful and heart-wrenching rides. Each year, I knew I would survive until the next, but the fear for my mother was ever present, lingering in the back of my mind constantly, never ceasing to let me know that my father was still abusing my mother and that one day, I must stop it.

That train ride signaled something else, a bad something else. It marked the day I made the first of many schoolboy enemies. Potter. Arrogant Potter. It never ceases to amaze me, to this day, that he was so...ah, I can't even put it into words. Him and his little friends always torturing me. What I want to know, have always wanted to know, is why did he choose me? Why did he choose me to tease, me to annoy, me to destroy? What did I ever do to him? I didn't even know him before that moment on the train. Oh well, what's done is done.

That year was probably one of my best at Hogwarts. I didn't have to worry about good and evil, right and wrong. What was, was. There was no need to think anything of other things. I was worried about Potter and his friends, along with my problem at home. My father was abusing my mother so often that she often didn't write for a week or so due to injuries sustained from my father's hands. Every day, I planned my father's downfall, along with Potter's, but my main worry was concentrated on my father.

My new friends helped. They understood where I came from, why I felt the way I did. I went over to their houses over breaks to avoid my house and what lie in wait there, though I could never shake the feeling of concern for my mother. I had to get her out of there.

Over the summer holidays, I went home and suffered the pent up wrath of my father. I returned to school with a broken arm, having no one at home with enough strength or care to heal it. The nurse quickly healed it when I entered school like that. She badgered me, trying to get me to say how I had broken my arm, but I wouldn't say a word. I was afraid of what my father might do if he found out I told someone what he did.

The war with Potter and his friends continued, but I tried to focus on my studies. I learned as many curses and defensive spells I could, practicing by night and thinking of when to use them against my father. The spells I studied at night also helped against Potter, who knew a lot of small curses. My hatred for him grew as I did, filling every pore of my skin until I almost began to sweat with the amount of hatred I had. The hatred I harbored for my two enemies, Potter and my father, grew with each passing moment and soon I became a secluded, hateful loner. Even my friends had abandoned me for other things, like Quidditch.

Quidditch, another of my failing attempts at normality. I wanted so badly to play, but the truth was, I was an abominable player. I could hardly fly well, let alone manage a ball or bat while trying to fly. Yet Potter, Potter was the best. Seeker for the Gryffindor team and always beating the Slytherins into the dust. I took it quite personally and took every chance I had to jinx him into tomorrow, though I usually wound up in detention with Professor McGonagall. She still thinks I was wrong in the things I did, but she didn't understand. She didn't know, and never will know, the pain I went through every day, both physical and mental. I'm sorry she never felt it because I think it would have done her good.

I remember one day I cursed Potter and his friend, sending them to the Hospital Wing. Unfortunately, Professor McGonagall's classroom was right there and she heard the commotion. Before I could escape her berating, she descended upon me with harsh words, yelling at me in front of quite a few spectators. They laughed afterwards, but I didn't. I spent the next month in detention with her, though it wasn't nearly as bad as what my father would've done.

I survived the next two years at Hogwarts without much incident, though home was a living hell. Week by week it got worse and I knew my mother would die soon if I didn't get her out. A chance presented itself shortly after I came back home for the summer vacation before my fourth year. My father came home, drunk of course, and started yelling at my mother. Sick of his abusive behavior, I launched myself at him, knocking him out as his head hit the floor, for the surprise of my attack caught him off guard and he lost his balance.

My mother looked at me with the strangest look on her face. She looked both relieved and dismayed that I had attacked my own father. I quickly regained myself, knowing I had to be the strong one. I ushered her outside, intensely aware of the fact that me, a mere thirteen-year-old, was leading my mother out of danger, not the other way around. She apparated to a relative's, a sister's, house and stayed there until my father found her a few months later while I was in school and unable to assist her.

I juggled the idea of going home over Christmas break to help my mother, but the one friend that had stood by me since second year advised me not to, saying that I myself might not come back. I argued with him, wanting to protect my mother, but he didn't change his decision and showed me things I wouldn't have seen from where I was standing. Some kids started to tease me about my devotion to my mother, they obviously didn't understand, and I defended her name viciously, sometimes attacking those who would not let up. My study in the Dark Arts increased as I became more and more determined to defeat my father and liberate my mother at the same time.

Around the time I started my fifth year, a new, powerful wizard had risen to high standards. Few knew his real name, he preferred Voldemort, or the Dark Lord to his followers. His attacks on muggleborns steadily grew and by my seventh year, he had a large number of supporters, both forced and willing. Many Slytherins wanted to join him, myself included. My father joined and I saw his scar, the Dark Mark, he called it. His assaults on my mother lessened as he found other victims to terrorize, equally innocent victims. Being a Slytherin, I followed in my father's footsteps and only through the good grace of Albus Dumbledore did I come out unscathed.

Those years, from my seventh year at Hogwarts until three years later, were the most horrible times of my life. I witnessed murder, participated in murder, witnessed torture, participated in torture and too many other ghastly things to name. I became as feared as all the other Death Eaters, taking my anger towards my father out on other, faultless people. My heart became colder with each murder; each torture as the Dark Lord infatuated my brain with harmful, sinful thoughts and sights.

Though easily the worst times in my life, the second happiest moment in my life occurred during those dark years. My father was killed. My mother was free at last and I couldn't be happier, except now, being a Death Eater no longer had any meaning for me. Dumbledore helped me to get a job as a teacher at Hogwarts, Potions Master. I was forever in his debt, and still am, I fear.

As a Death Eater, I tortured innocent people all because the Dark Lord asked me to, and because of my anger towards my father. There are times I wonder if I would have been better off without a father at all or at least one that wasn't a drunken bastard. For years, I tormented myself over it, blaming myself for things that I couldn't have had anything to do with. I blamed myself for my father's drinking problems, saying that I was deserving of his beatings. That somehow, I had done something wrong that made my father the way he was. I told Dumbledore about these feelings, at times when I couldn't think straight, times when I needed to talk to someone, someone who understood how I grew up.

When I was growing up in that house I never called a real home, I swore to myself that I would never treat my children the way my father treated me. But Dumbledore said that if I ever did, it wouldn't be my fault, that the manner in which my father acted around my mother and me was part of a cycle, a cycle that could only end with me. I didn't believe him at the time and continued on my way through life, snarling and sneering at anyone who dared to defy me or dig into my past.

Then something happened. A colossal change in my life. I met a woman, smart, beautiful, wonderful. She allowed me to open up, be myself, so to speak. She taught me ways to handle things I'd never heard before. She tried to teach me how to love, but my past kept getting in the way. I wasn't able to feel for her the way she felt for me. I couldn't return her feelings. After all, who would want me anyway? I began to push her away and when she told me she was pregnant, I pushed all the harder, knowing somewhere inside me that that child was going to live the same childhood I did. The same life, the same thoughts about how I treated them. I couldn't put someone else through that.

When she left, I fell headfirst into my old habits. I pushed everyone away, not wanting to know anything about anyone, or vice versa. I shrank into a shell, my rooms. I read furiously, anything I could get my hands on. Potion books, advanced magic books, history books, even muggle books. I learned a lot those years, both about myself and things around me. I wrote pages upon pages of things, thoughts, notes, findings. I conducted experiments daily, scribbling my observations on paper and collected and stored them. Afterwards, I had piles upon piles of used parchment and a pile of used and broken quills.

Many people don't know much about me. Like the fact that I read any spare moment I have, which are few and far between. I love to write, honing my skills as a writer. Being a Potions Master isn't just my job, I enjoy brewing them. There is something that is calming about a softly simmering cauldron. I began to forget about my past, though I still awoke with nightmares that wouldn't allow me to return to sleep after I was up. Things weren't changing much; they followed a steady routine that satisfied me.

Then Potter returned, though not in the same form. This time, his son and I was about to blow my lid. Another agonizing seven years with a Potter faced me and I didn't want to face it down. I tried my best to make his life hell and I think he figured out at last why I treated him so, though it took him three years. His ruddy godfather escaped Azkaban and that werewolf started teaching as a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Then that damned Potter stole the Order of Merlin right out of my hands. I was ready to throttle him. All those years and I could have killed the little...

His fifth year, I had to teach him Occlumency. Little brat looked into the pensieve I had borrowed from Dumbledore and saw one of my memories. You can bet he didn't learn Occlumency anymore. I guess I should give the boy some credit, he did defeat the Dark Lord in the end.

That's another thing. I joined the Order, the Order of the Phoenix and got put up as a spy. I must have aged twenty years in the span of three years. The stress of it nearly drove me to tears. I did my work well though and in the end, it almost cost me my life. But then again, at least I wouldn't have to be here with these memories, dwelling on whether or not I'll go to heaven or hell. I really need a drink or perhaps, I should just go on until I die naturally, instead of turning to the bottle, like my father.

I met my son and his mother. I was so worried that if he did something wrong, I would want to hit him like my father did me. Surprisingly, I survived, as did he, though that didn't take away the fear that maybe I would, maybe I...

Now, as I look back on these things called memories, I wonder over them. Did I really have complete control over it? Was there really a god watching over me, guiding my life? Is there such a thing as love? Are there other beings out there? Am I really an old git who likes to terrorize people? Am I really selfish? Are my assumptions about Heaven and Hell true? Am I right in thinking that once the pain is written down, recorded on parchment, I'll forget about them? I hope so, because my whole life up until a couple years ago have been pain and I don't think I can take much more of it. Let someone else deal with this. Let someone else suffer for awhile. Haven't I been through enough? An abusive father, Death Eater activities, the Potters; it's all too much. I wish....I wish I could....

_LS Munch/McCoy_

A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Please review and tell me what you thnik. And for any of you who couldn't figure it out, t was Snape talking throughout the story. Anyways......


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